Interesting… Sometimes museums that have a specified “path” that takes you through all the exhibitions once and in a particular direction (such as, famously, the older building or Honkan of the Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan) get criticized for doing that. I guess the idea is that you should let the viewer decide what he/she wants to see first, second, third. So the current vogue is for there not to be a particular path to follow at all.

Here’s the map for the Honkan at the Tokyo museum: http://www.tnm.go.jp/jp/guide/map/honkan.html You can see that it is arranged in a big loop and that you go in the door, turn right and start with Jomon and Yayoi and Kofun, then just go from there. It is a common characteristic of late 19th and early 20th century museums all over the world, actually; this single pathway, arranged as a timeline in chronological order. Compare it with the Toyokan in the same museum: http://www.tnm.go.jp/jp/guide/map/toyokan.html which is organized by culture area and medium rather than time period. Much less linear, and you can see that you’d have to retrace your steps a lot.

Hm..I guess it’s more flexible if there aren’t specific pathways in a museum. It’s probably my ocd telling me that repeating some parts of the path is not “clean”..but for enjoying art, I can totally understand other people not wanting to be told which ways to walk in museums.